Beautiful food

August 2012 posts

August 20, 2012

I still get blown away by blogs. Not often. I've become jaded. This is the blog of a French Stylist named Anne Millet. Oh my! I have fallen hard for her universe. I looked at every single page of the blog and now i want her to adopt me. She is going to be HUGE. This is my prediction.

Being a sylist is seeing. I don't know how she does it. How does she know to assemble thigs in just the right way? I know what i like but I don't always know how to get there.

Voila les enfants.

On another note. Who would be interested in hosting a giveaway of my novel Hidden in Paris on their blogs? (The real thing my friends, not the e-version. Paperback like in the good old days:) Send me an email at hiddeninfrance(at)gmail(dot)come. Bisous!!!

August 13, 2012

Paris, I take back every complaint I had about your weather. Now I think back with fondness about all
that rain and bluster. Where I live now is SO HOT that by the time the
clock marks 9 am I’m afraid to get out of the house. I just took a look at the
temperature. 110 degrees. Yikes! Guess who’s staying indoors today.

The heat has robbed me of whatever was left of my dwindling work
ethic. Tomorrow is back to school, so I’ll beat myself up then. For now I’ll just be loafing and
staying cool by watching synchronized swimming. Are you watching it too?
Tell me, is it completely ridiculous or genius? I can’t make up my mind.
I stare mesmerized at the space-age sequined-outfits, the bizarre little hats
the garish makeup. I don’t marvel at their perfect unison. It’s the little
pinchers on the nose and the gaping mouths that get my rapt attention.

Another way to cool off is to go through my Paris pictures. I
took these pictures on my last trip. My friend Flavia was showing me
parts of the city I did not know very well (some pretty louche ones, Flavia :)

Fighting our umbrellas and the blustery rain we stumbled upon the Antoine et Lili home shop. (turn down the volume before ckinking or you'll jump out of your seat)

August 05, 2012

I grew up in Paris and I believe I know a quite a few things about rain. Rain, I used to think, is a piece of #@&%, meant to ruin everybody's fun. Now I live in Los Angeles and let me tell you, there is something wrong and unnatural about a desert that pretends to be an oasis.

Our palm trees and bright green lawns come at a price. Most of our water comes from 'elsewhere' and you try not to think of what would happen if elsewhere dried up too. Between the water restrictions, the thick pollution, the jammed ten-lane freeways, the shallowness and the butt-ugly architecture, L.A. can put you in a state of permanent mental and physical dehydration. L.A. Stinks, is filled with dumb people and has no soul. (Now for the interesting bit: I feel right at home here.)

( In one of the many ponds on the properties in Kauai where we were unbelievably lucky to stay, this marvel appeared one morning. Up close, the lotus flower can make your knees weak.)

In L.A. we take short showers out of mean little water-conserving spouts that are imposed by law when a house is sold and bought. (Or course people cheat and change those faucets, and then live with their guilt -- or absence thereof.) In LA my bathtub is huge so I have to be in the kind of dangerous, period-induced mood even chocolate won't fix to indulge in a bath. My garden is irrigated down to a science with drip system, fancy timers, and I go through the yard weekly checking for leaks because one little problem and a plant can die in a matter of days. In my case, and given that 'guilty' is the natural state I revel in, I agonize over every drop and still feel guilty. Okay... what am I getting at?

(Just a few snapshot taken on the estate's driveway... Not a typo, people. This was indeed only the driveway!)

I'm getting at the fact that I just spent time in Kauai and I feel washed! I feel replenished. I feel serene and moist and all around energized by that beautiful Hawaiian island. Kauai is all about water, and with water comes life. Within hours of being there I felt human again. My skin and mood softened instantly, my eyes stopped itching. I stopped twitching. My hair frizzed up to a substance resembling the top of an extra foam latte. I put on a bathing suit and forgot all about clothes. That breathless, high-pitched voice in my head suddenly had nothing to say.

(I don't know the name of this tree but it has multicolor flowers on it. Most of the beaches we visited were essentially empty.)

I feasted on H2o in ridiculous ways. When I wasn't bobbing on the ocean or floating in the pool, I was taking showers, greedily. Indoor showers, outdoor showers... An outdoor warm shower surrounded with tropical plants with the blue of the ocean and the sky filling your eyes has to be the most luxurious of human experiences. It made me so happy I fantasised constantly about moving there forever. By there I mean precisely under that shower head.

(Another empty beach. It's a treck to get to those hidden Kauai beaches but it makes it so much more interesting and adventurous.)

There is rain on the North side of Kauai that comes and goes. As though some godly hand arbitrarily turned on a faucet. Billowing grey clouds advance with no warning, there is a deluge, but before you finish saying 'what was that?' it's bright blue sky again. Those downpours made me experience the abundance of Earth rather than its scarcity. A nice break from L.A., let me tell you. This connected me with myself in much needed ways.

(above is one of the clouds I was takling about. An instant later it rained)

Voila my Kauai adventure. I feel very, very lucky to have had this experience. We stayed at a friend's guest house. The estate was not to be believed. Every corner was lush beauty. The memories of all this beauty and water will carry me, I hope, through all the dry patches and ugliness of the year to come. Not to be negative, but something tells me that the next few months will not be a picnic.